Is iPad a Spork? iOS 26 Liquid Glass Criticism, OpenAI $200M Defense Deal
Download MP3I just wanted to shout it from the top of a mountain, but I didn't have a mountain. I had a newsroom and a camera. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, more features coming out from the iOS 26 betas, but Jason and I gonna get into Liquid Glass. Is it actually good design, and is it too early to judge it?
Stephen Robles:Also, Craig Federighi did an interview with Federico Vitici, I actually pronounced all of that correctly, about the iPad and why it shouldn't be a spork. We're gonna get into that. Plus, OpenAI made a deal with the Department of Defense, threads getting more into the Fetaverse, and more. This episode is brought to you by agency and one password, and you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your host, Steven Robles, coming at you from slightly different location.
Stephen Robles:And my friend, Jason Nathan, coming from his usual location. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:You're at the outdoor Apple Park studio podcast studio now. Is that what this is?
Stephen Robles:This is I'm on a mountain, hence the opening movie quote, which did you happen to know what movie that's from?
Jason Aten:It's, it's, it's it's elf. No. It's not elf. It's No. Will Ferrell.
Jason Aten:Is Will Ferrell. Burgundy. What's the name of that movie? That's that's right. Anchorman.
Jason Aten:Anchorman.
Stephen Robles:Anchorman. Anchorman. You got nailed it again. Yes. That was the quote.
Stephen Robles:I'm in literally on a mountain recording outside on battery power. I'm breaking all the rule all my normal rules for recording a podcast. If a bear comes up behind me, just let me know. Okay? Just to give me some heads up.
Jason Aten:We won't.
Stephen Robles:Just please. I don't think a bear will come up. You might hear things in the in the distance. I'm gonna use AI to remove as much background noise. There's some sawing going on a ways away.
Stephen Robles:But, no, I'm on a I'm on in the Blue Ridge Mountains recording and, still, getting the show out. Still doing it. So here we go. Let's do it. We have some five star review shout outs, then we'll get into all the news.
Stephen Robles:Some fun fun five star review shout outs. Route 12 B from The USA said, do you wanna accept a collect call from here's a five star review? We had more reviews about collect calls this week than anything else. Thank you for doing that. Josh Murph from The USA.
Stephen Robles:Scotty 134 from The USA, another collect call reference. Also asked, do you know what a Watts Watts line is? Nineteen sixties to seventies time frame. Do know what that is?
Jason Aten:I I think if I well, I don't know. I wouldn't have put it in the sixties or seventies, I thought that there was a thing one time where, like, businesses could have, like, a reverse it's, like, essentially a reverse 800 number where instead of people being able to call them toll free, businesses had a line where they could call, like, long distance for a certain amount or something like that. But I didn't think it was quite that old. So maybe I'm maybe I'm wrong.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Well, let us know scotie one three four. Email the other guy at primary tech dot f m because that actually works. It actually works. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Tizweed from The USA said we're his favorite tech show. Thank you for that. And PMT Apple from The USA subscribed because of our daily show, which I will mention, The Daily Show is still going on even as I'm up here. If it sounds slightly less like me, it is generated by eleven Labs, but I'll be back recording it personally next week, when I'm back in the studio. But if you support the show, you get the ad free version of the show, you get bonus episodes, and you get Primary Tech Daily, Monday through Friday, the top news headlines in just a few minutes.
Stephen Robles:So first thing, this is also a listener feedback, but also some news. We had some anonymous, an anonymous email. He wanted to remain anonymous talking about full self driving versus Waymo because I talked about my Waymo experience last week. And it this person has experience with full self driving with his Tesla Model three and finds it to be better, the full self driving in the Tesla. He says Waymo is occasionally can take up to five minutes on an unprotected left turn, whereas full self driving handles it no problem, used it in heavy rain, and the sound the commute that they do, typically has zero interventions, which I guess is when you have to, like, take over from the Tesla full self driving.
Stephen Robles:And so that was just their experience. If others out there have experienced both with Waymo and Tesla full self driving, I'd be curious to hear, because, also, this was actually news this week, Waymo is going to try and expand to New York City, which whether or not they can with regulatory concerns remains to be seen, but they're gonna try and do it. So you had a thought about FSD.
Jason Aten:Okay. I have a couple thoughts about all those things. Yes. The first one is about this last thing you just said. I don't even think it's necessarily regulatory.
Jason Aten:I think that the taxis are not going to let Waymo into New York. I mean, think about the fight that Uber's had. So and in New York City, Waymo is essentially I think the way they worded it is with safety yeah. Safety drivers. So they're they're trying to, like, in New York, they can't operate without someone without a driver even if the driver's just sitting there reading, you know, the times or something like that.
Jason Aten:Right? So they have to have someone in there. But I think it'll be interesting. But New York City is about as mapped of a place as anywhere in the world.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:So you would think it would be possible. So okay. So I just did wanna touch on the person who wrote in. Very much appreciate it. And I wanted to be clear that I've only ridden in one Waymo, and it was a while ago.
Jason Aten:Okay? And so that's so I just wanna make that part of it clear. But as far as full self driving, I just wanna say that, like, individual experiences are hard to compare, and, also, you live in the sunniest place on the Continental United States, come to Chicago. I would love to see what you think about full self driving if you drive through Chicago. Because I like, and I would just make sure.
Jason Aten:Did you read the article that I wrote about it? Because minimal interventions is not an experience that a lot of people have with full self driving. Now to be fair, it only tried to kill me twice, and I was paying attention, and so I didn't die. But I think that the concept of full self driving is great. I think that Tesla could be there, but they're stubborn about the idea that they don't wanna put the sensors in because of the added weight and the added expense.
Jason Aten:The expense being the big part of it. So they are just, like, wholeheartedly committed to being doing this with vision only with with cameras. And I just think that that is we're just not there. Maybe AI will help us get there faster, but I think that universally, people agree that Waymo is better at this. I just wanna say.
Stephen Robles:Now there there was one other detail where the listener said they have a new model three, like, whatever the latest model, the Highland one. And I think the one that you did full self driving in was like what? 20
Jason Aten:It was probably a '20 two or three. It's it's not the newest model model three, but it would have the latest version of full self driving.
Stephen Robles:Right. And I didn't know if there was any, like, camera differences or hardware differences. I just don't know. I I I think I should just look that up. So whether that's the difference.
Stephen Robles:But I the LiDAR, I don't know. Just knowing the technologies, I feel it feels like LiDAR would be advantageous.
Jason Aten:Well, and Waymo uses three different things. It uses radar, LiDAR, and cameras, and and Tesla just uses cameras.
Stephen Robles:Right. So let us know. I'd be curious. More full self driving experiences out there from our listeners and viewers. Let us know.
Stephen Robles:Especially if you use it on a regular commute, we should give you it. And in any other cities, because obviously Waymo's only in three cities right now, San Francisco, Austin, and Atlanta.
Jason Aten:And Phoenix. I have to keep reminding you of Phoenix.
Stephen Robles:Oh, Phoenix. So four. Sorry. Yeah. Before self driving, obviously, you could use everywhere, which is another advantage, but but let us know.
Stephen Robles:Alright. So we're gonna go through a little bit of news here, and then I wanna spend some time on liquid glass, because there's been some criticism about the design. So we'll get to that. But there was actually some parental control updates. This was an Apple Newsroom article earlier this week, last week, talking about some of the changes that Apple is bringing, some of them already in iOS 18 dot four, which is out for everyone.
Stephen Robles:From what I could tell, and I know you you'll have more information on this probably than me, but, basically, three major changes to parental controls in the Apple device world. You can share the age range of your kids with apps. That's kind of a new paradigm likely because of some regulatory changes in certain states. There's gonna be new age, like, brackets, basically. Right now, if you wanted to set an age restriction, like, for an app, you basically have 12 plus and then 17 plus and, like, nothing in between.
Stephen Robles:And so now apps will be able to have 13, 16, and 18 years of age as designations. And they're adding another ask request where now kids can ask for more time on apps. Kids can ask to download certain apps. And now communication, if some if your child wants to text a number that is not in their contacts, previously, like what I've done, is you have to actually physically manually add a contact and a phone number to your child's contact if you have those restrictions enabled. Now you can just approve that number and contact in another ask request in, like, your messages, which is still not great that it's still in messages.
Stephen Robles:Unfortunately, we didn't get that changed in iOS 26, but it seemed like those are the changes. But from what you have, thought you think you had a briefing on it. Was does that comport with what you heard?
Jason Aten:Yeah. I did. I talked to Apple about this, and it was interesting. I think that they know that this is a thing I care very much about, and that's true. I also think I was the only person on this briefing who has three teenagers and then a, you know, an 11 year old.
Jason Aten:And so, it was I have an interesting perspective on this. Yeah. And it is true that they added an age rating category, which is helpful, I think, in some ways. I the the two things that are interesting about this is I actually wish that Apple did a little bit better job giving parents more con like, anytime you say kids in this age bucket should have this set of restrictions, yes, but what if I want my I mean, this is not true. But what if I want my 17 year old to have the same restrictions as my 13 year old?
Jason Aten:Like, I should just be able I don't shouldn't have to like, I should be able to do that a little bit more easily. And then the other thing is they they definitely are very they pay attention, but I'm not sure that anybody who's working on some of these teams has the same experience as parents like us. I don't know if their children are perfect or if they don't have children. I like because they kept talking about, like, the idea that they're trying to you know? Sometimes your kid figures out your passcode.
Jason Aten:Sure. Also, sometimes kids, like, the have the ability to change the passcode because you haven't toggled, like, the right thing on or off. Because, for example, if you allow account changes, they can just change their screen time passcode. And it's like if you don't know that that's happening, they don't have to figure yours out. They just type in a new one.
Jason Aten:And now the the notification, that's great because it at least tells you that a passcode is or has been entered in. And so far, in my experience, that is the only reliable thing a 100% of the time about screen time is that notification.
Stephen Robles:It is pretty good because I you know, like, when I put it into my child's device to change something, I'll get the notification. I'm like, thank you. That's actually
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:A great step.
Jason Aten:But I think that they were surprised when I said, yeah. Screen time, the app requests and the screen time requests, I think they work about 40% of the time. And especially the app request thing, oftentimes, my one of my kids will be like, I need this for my cross country team, I need this for school, I need this for whatever. And I'm like, approve, approve, approve, approve. And they're like, yeah.
Jason Aten:Nothing. And they send me another one. I'm like, approve. And it's like nothing. And they're like, well, at least in those cases, it doesn't let them download the app.
Jason Aten:I'm like, except for I don't wanna sit here for an hour hitting approve. Like Right. What the We need a better system than this. And I told them, I feel like it got worse when you started putting all of these things into messages.
Stephen Robles:Yes. And one thing I've had to do recently is, you know, I'll try to approve it in messages. It doesn't go through. My child will text me. It didn't go through.
Stephen Robles:If you go into settings screen time to that particular child, the request lives there also, which I forgot about or hadn't looked. And sometimes I I have to go to that screen and approve it in the settings, and then it'll go through. Because either the request didn't come through messages or the approval didn't go through. And so, yeah, it's still a mess and, thank you for letting them know. I don't know if it'll change it, but
Jason Aten:I do I mean, I I do appreciate that they are very focused on this and and my point was really, this is for parents a selling feature of the iPhone. Giving your kid an iPhone if you feel like you can help them create some boundaries because the thing about kids is they just don't even know what they don't know. And so how that but the the it is no longer a selling point if it's not bulletproof. And you can argue. It's like, oh, it works 97.8 of the time.
Jason Aten:I'm just like, then, nope. Zero. I don't want it. And just get it out of my house.
Stephen Robles:That's that's the thing. So those are changes into parental requests. Some other discoveries, in the betas. Mac stories, John Voorhees has done some work working on the new transcription APIs that are coming with iOS 26, macOS 26, and he has found that they are much improved even that it outpaces Whisper, which is OpenAI's transcription model that you can use on your Mac. And so I'll link to this article in Mac Stories.
Stephen Robles:He also links to Yap, which is if you're on the macOS Tahoe beta, you can download this app called Yap from GitHub. Again, run at your own risk. This is the beta and something from GitHub. But you can use Apple's transcription model through terminal, and John Voorhees has found it to be way just really fast and still accurate, which is really encouraging because this is the technology that is used when you add an audio file to an Apple Note, and that Apple Note will transcribe that audio file. That's what this is going to be, transcribing voice memos, also transcribing things like voice mails.
Stephen Robles:And this should be the same across all the Apple devices. And so I'm excited to see this. And especially third party apps like my personal favorite transcription app, which is transcriptionist, they can adopt this. They already have several models to choose from, which are the OpenAI models. But to add Apple's local model to his app, I I'm gonna email him and see if he's gonna do that.
Stephen Robles:But that would be really cool if you could do that, and it is that much faster and better. I'm also hoping and I talked about this, last time and in my shortcuts video with Apple Intelligence. It seems like the transcribe shortcuts action has been improved, and you can do it with longer audio, but still not like hour length audio. I'm hoping that will be improved over the summer, over the betas. So we you can use this just as a shortcuts action, but encouraging that the transcription is improved.
Stephen Robles:So yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And I think I think that the best part of that story is that John Voorhees just asked his son, could you do you think you could do this? And he did. So Yap is an app that his son actually made.
Stephen Robles:Oh, okay.
Jason Aten:Think so. He's like, he just could you
Stephen Robles:just whip something up so
Jason Aten:we can just sort of check this out? He's like, yeah. I could probably do that in, like, ten minutes. And so he did. And so, yeah, you do have to be running the beta, you also have to figure out what to do with something that you download from GitHub.
Jason Aten:I don't know how either, like I know the beta part works. I don't know much about how you would do the thing from GitHub. Maybe it's not complicated at all. But this is really encouraging for the when things ship because, like, he put in there a little table and using the large v three turbo, which is the most act like, the it's basically the best combination of accuracy and speed with, like, the Whisper. It was a minute and forty one seconds, and using just the onboard Apple model was forty five seconds.
Jason Aten:Like, that's a big deal. Like and this is, a thirty minute video or something like that. So, like, that's a huge improvement. If I drop a thirty minute thing into, Whisper using that model, like, it'd be real nice to have that be shorter.
Stephen Robles:Exactly. And again, to be able to use it across devices, again, apps like transcriptionist is on the iPad right now. You can use that app. And so it'd be amazing if you could use that and be on device too, you know, where you wouldn't need Internet connectivity to do that. So that's pretty exciting.
Stephen Robles:Now we're gonna talk about a couple interviews that Apple execs have done with people like Federighi and Vittichi. And so I wanted to just throw this out there. We've talked about, obviously, how Apple execs weren't on the talk show, the live talk show with Gruber. But I wanted to mention, he was on the channel's podcast with Peter Kafka. And I think it's the first time that Gruber has openly said that, quote, Apple was not happy about the blog post, the one that something rotten is in Cupertino, and that Apple felt it was unfair.
Stephen Robles:And, you know, obviously, that was probably the assumption, but I think this is the first time Gruber is explicitly stating it and points to the fact that that's why they weren't on the talk show is because they felt that blog post was unfair, and they're upset about it, I guess. So kinda telling. I don't know that it feels weird. I mean, I understand Apple execs probably wouldn't wanna appear defensive on the live talk show, like having to defend their choices or feel like they needed to negate Gruber's article. But it's also just a bad luck because now they have done seemingly hundreds of interviews with other creators, individual YouTubers, with Max Store.
Stephen Robles:Like, they seem to have done an interview with everyone except us, which listen. If you wanna do an interview with Primary Technology, let us know. Craig Federighi, we'd love to have you. But seemingly everyone now except Gruber, who they had done interviews with the last ten years. And, honestly, I feel like two to three years ago is when you started seeing more creator based interviews, iJustine doing interviews.
Stephen Robles:But, like, the seven years before that, when Apple execs were on the talk show, they weren't doing interviews other places unless it was with, like, GQ or Vanity Fair once a year. Right? Like Mhmm. They weren't as accessible at that.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I mean, this is the most that they I feel like that they've ever done. They've done the all of the interviews except for the one. And I think that it's it's interesting. Like, Gruber's like, was a win for me and a loss for them, which, like, they made him kind of a martyr.
Jason Aten:Now Gruber is a respectable enough human that he's not, like, he's not overly capitalizing on that, but I do think he I'm sure his talk show this year had as good of a what however he would measure those ratings as ever even, you know, with Joanna Stern and and Eli Patel, who are great guests, by the way. If either of them want to come on this podcast too, we would just talk to them for an hour.
Stephen Robles:100%.
Jason Aten:I think it's I think, yes, it was very challenging because does Craig Federighi want to sit on that couch and have to address it, which I think they would have had to do in that environment, probably not. But, also, if they're that angry about it, like I told you before, like, we were talking before we were started recording, like, that would be the venue to do it and have an opportunity to just to talk about, like, hey. Like, you know, here's where we disagree on this. And I think it would have a different level of credibility. Federighi pushed back on that, with Joanna Stern in their video, which I think was, like, the first one to come out.
Jason Aten:And, honestly, I think I mentioned this. It was the least articulate I can remember Federighi being as he was trying to push back on this sort of, narrative that everyone had already sort of accepted to be true. It I just think that was a conversation that would have been really compelling because we know that, like, they the Gruber and and the Federighi and Jaws, they, like, they know each other.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Right? It would not have been a hostile conversation, but I think it would have been really helpful. And so I don't know that it necessarily makes Apple look really good to be like, we have feelings about this, so we don't want to talk to you for a while. We're on we're on a break.
Stephen Robles:Of course. We were on break. Yes. That's a Friends reference. That's a well, that's not a movie quote, but that would've a good quote for the show.
Stephen Robles:And speaking of interviews then, Federighi, I think for the first time, did an interview with Federico Vettichi at Mac Stories, which kudos to him for landing an interview. But, obviously, Vettichi's huge iPad user and has been for many years. And so they inevitably talked about iPadOS, the changes that came, and why it's not just running macOS on the iPad. And Federighi had a couple examples, but he basically said, we don't wanna make a spork. He was like, I don't know if you know what a spork is in Italy or whatever.
Stephen Robles:But a spork, obviously, not a great fork, not a great spoon, trying to be both. And that's it feels like the best, analogy for Apple's strategy of the iPad software. They don't want to put macOS, which is an operating system made for laptops and desktops, on a tablet computer and make a spork. Basically, it'd be kind of an okay tablet with an okay operating with a good operating system, but an okay form factor and just not great at either. I will I I get that.
Stephen Robles:Like, that is I've made several videos on my channel about that, and I find it to be true, at least in a form factor sense, because there are times when using an iPad as a tablet is unique to the device, and it excels at doing certain things. Editing the audio of this podcast, I talk about many times. Also, digital sheet music. You can't put a Mac on a music stand. It just I've tried it.
Stephen Robles:You could try to put the music stand flat. Sheet music is not made in landscape. Sorry. And so, you know, there are times when a tablet form factor specifically is useful, and having an operating system tailored to that, I think, is beneficial that it's made for that. Now they've added a bunch of features that make it more macOS like.
Stephen Robles:I think the window management is probably gonna be better. I haven't played with it a ton, so I'll have to once I get home, I'm gonna put the beta on my iPad, and and we'll talk about it more in-depth later. But it looks like better window management, but it's still an iPad because that's the form factor. And I know you have said just put Mac OS on it. Other people have said just make a touch screen Mac.
Stephen Robles:And I'm not saying don't do those things. Maybe people would like a touch screen Mac. I don't think I would. I mean, I still go back to the Steve Jobs illustration of, like, are you gonna, like, hold your hand up in the air to scroll a web page? Two fingers scrolling on a trackpad is way better and way easier.
Stephen Robles:Pinching to zoom, I mean, technically, you could do that on a trackpad too. So if someone wanted a touchscreen Mac, maybe, but then you would have to change the interface and the UI to accommodate some of those things. You could argue maybe they've done that already with the control center updates. But, again, try to navigate a menu bar on a 13 inch MacBook Air with your finger, hover even something as simple as hover states where and, again, I get this when I try to edit Squarespace websites. Just trying to get a hover state on an iPad is really cumbersome.
Stephen Robles:And maybe that's a software thing. Maybe that's a user interface paradigm thing. But if you're on an iPad, you also have to make the operating system such where you can use an Apple Pencil, which, again, is one of the more useful things for it. So I'm not going to defend or whatever, but I I identify with and think the spork analogy is actually well suited to why the iPad should have a distinct operating system and UI than the Mac. Now I know you were writing down things as I was talking.
Jason Aten:I was writing things down because I don't like to forget. Know. The first hippie. The first thing was it was interesting because, Joanna Stern asked them about because one of the things that was really sort of interesting about the iPad is it got all of these things that people wanted except for one, and it didn't get a thing that the Vision Pro got, which is essentially now multi user support. You can save your Vision Pro profile on your phone and pick up any Vision Pro and use it and get the iPad can't.
Jason Aten:There is no mall except for on maybe, like, education ones or whatever. But there's no multi user support on the iPad. It's like, this is absurd. Right? Well, the reason is they would like everyone to buy their own iPad.
Jason Aten:Right? And it's like and Joanna's starting to ask, like, why not do this? And it's like, well, we think you should have a Mac and an iPad. With okay. So that's that's the thing that's true that they that in their mind, which this that's the philosophy of the iPhone.
Jason Aten:Obviously, the iPhone is an incredibly personal device. Right? You don't share you might hand your kid an iPhone to watch a movie, but you do not share an iPhone with other people.
Stephen Robles:Like an Apple Watch. You wouldn't share an Apple Watch.
Jason Aten:Same thing. Because your Apple Watch is useless without the phone that it's paired to, basically. So that's one thing. The other thing is there's obviously some technical things going on with the iPad because they have prioritized of the touch screen. I think Gruber was talking about this that the reason that they hadn't done the windowing in the past or that the reason the windowing was more limited in the past is they were not willing to sacrifice the latency of when you and I I think that this is true with rare exceptions.
Jason Aten:I cannot think of a time where I touched something on the iPad to make and, like, didn't feel like it was responsive. Like, they've they've nailed that. Right? And if it doesn't respond, you're like, you know, hard reset the iPad. It's like, okay.
Jason Aten:Fine. It's dead. I'm not even gonna bother trying anything else. Where and so on a Mac, there's obviously a lot of different levels of complication on Mac OS where you would introduce a lot of those failure points. But you said something that I think is bunk.
Jason Aten:First of all Okay.
Stephen Robles:Okay. I wanna
Jason Aten:be clear. My position is not that they should just put Mac OS on the iPad. Okay. What I said was if you're going to do all this, you're basically at that point, you're just not putting Mac OS on there. Like, what is the difference between what they're trying to do on the it's like we're trying to create two versions of this interactive operating system.
Jason Aten:And if you're going to do that, why not just give people the full thing? But I don't think that it's a the argument seems to be like, well, what are you gonna do? You're gonna try to touch icons and micro Mac OS on your with your finger? No. You're gonna just use it in a magic keyboard and use the trackpad like you said.
Jason Aten:But then when you pull it off to watch Disney plus, it's an iPad.
Stephen Robles:Like But but but but what you think would what you mean by the what what do you mean by that? Does the interface change? Does the inter like, the interaction paradigm change? What do you mean? When you take it off the keyboard, what happens?
Jason Aten:You open Disney plus and you just watch a Disney I mean, I don't like, I'm just saying that some of the arguments about the limitations of Mac a touchscreen Mac for example, I have a touchscreen PC, and I've maybe once touched the screen, and it's fine. But if I but when I use the Surface now I'm not arguing that Windows is a great thing to use and touch. But what I am saying is that, like, when when I've used the Surface and you aren't using it with a keyboard and you open, say, an app like Netflix, I think Netflix is the best example because it's it's been a while since I've used it. It it just behaves like a tablet. Right?
Jason Aten:Like, it doesn't change to a different operating system, but you just touch it like you would a tablet.
Stephen Robles:But that's I think the problem is an iPad would have to do both, be navigable by pointer and by meat stick, namely your finger. Whereas a Mac never has to think about your finger except for on the trackpad. Like, you are never clicking something with the touch point of your finger. Whereas an iPad, yeah, in a Magic Keyboard would be a great computing device as a pointer, but you have to be able to take it off of that and then navigate it by a finger. And I think you can't I don't think it is easy or maybe not even doable to optimize everything for both.
Stephen Robles:You might be able to optimize a lot of things for both. Again, you can look at control center, tapping an app to open it. Sure. You can click the Disney icon with a pointer or tap it with a finger, and it is equally doable. But if you have a complicated app like the LumaFusion video editing app or DaVinci Resolve or which arguably are pretty complicated on iPad right now as it is.
Stephen Robles:But, you know, you have those kinds of apps. And the touch targets, like, what size do you make them? Too big, it's like I don't have enough UI space even though I have a pointer. But too small, then if you take the iPad off the Magic Keyboard, now I can't accurately tap something with my finger. So I still think there's a challenge there that most people don't consider.
Stephen Robles:And there was a Windows NT or whatever when Microsoft tried to make a specific version that would go between it or whatever. It would be tablet and a dock. But you also if you take the iPad off the Magic Keyboard, you don't want the whole UI to change or shift or snap to something that is now touch friendly. I think that would be a mistake too. So I get what you're saying.
Stephen Robles:I just I don't think in practice, like I don't know. I don't I don't I don't think it would be good.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And I think maybe part of it is that the, like, the surface is obviously the closest thing we have to what this would be. And the surface is fine, and it but it's obviously very limited. I mean, my iPad Pro is way more powerful than most of the surfaces that have ever been made with the m four in it. But it's also, like, it does seem like what Apple would have to do is make a third category here.
Jason Aten:You'd have Macs that just run Mac OS. You'd have iPads that run iPad OS, and then would you have some kind of a convertible Mac that could do multiple things? And you're right. Apple's just not gonna do that. They would much rather you just buy both the Mac and an iPad.
Jason Aten:Just do it.
Stephen Robles:No. To your point, the multi user thing I do think is a bit egregious because if you had a 13 inch iPad Air and two kids under the age of seven, it would be nice to create two profiles for those kids and, like, let them let them use both. So I think that is like an artificial gating system that has nothing to do with the iPad UI or how it functions, name except for tap the user. And like you said, there are ways through mobile device management in education spaces where an iPad can have multiple user profiles. Like, it is a thing that's possible, just not accessible to the average user.
Stephen Robles:So I do think that in particular would be useful. But I also think
Jason Aten:Or just a guest mode.
Stephen Robles:A guest mode would be nice.
Jason Aten:I mean, if I could take my iPad turn it into guest mode and hand it to my kids so I don't have to worry that they accidentally deleted 400 emails. Right? Like, just like you do on the Vision Pro. Give me a guest And
Stephen Robles:there there is one part of the argument where I'm actually not sure where I stand, which is the biggest difference aside from UI is that the iPad is still sandboxed unlike the Mac, which is why you can run clipboard managers on the Mac. You can run audio hijack. You can install a GitHub app called Yap to run a transcription through the thing. You can't do any of that on the iPad. And for it to run macOS opens the door to that.
Stephen Robles:Is that good, bad, or otherwise? It it increases the level of complexity on the platform as a whole. I would like to use a clipboard manager on my iPad, so maybe I want non sandbox apps, but I'm just not sure. And so that's that's the part I'm I'm not I don't I don't know actually where I stand on that part. I also like not worrying about my mom downloading malware because I've had my brother-in-law, who's much younger than my mom, accidentally do that on his Mac and totally toasted it, and we had to factory reset it.
Stephen Robles:And so there is, I think, something to be said about the benefits and downsides of that as well. So, Adam
Jason Aten:Do you think there's a spreadsheet somewhere in Tim Cook's office, which by the way, I was I just came I knew this was, like, I don't know, seven or eight months old, but there's a Wall Street Journal interview with Tim Cook. It's like a job interview thing. And, he he's he just one at one point, he literally says the words, I was good at math, and I'm like, oh, that explains everything about this company today. It's all about the math. But do you think there's a spreadsheet somewhere that's like the amount of revenue we get from the App Store and the iPad that we would lose if they took that away.
Jason Aten:Because they're never gonna do it on the iPhone unless they're forced by law or, you know, the marines or something to come and do that. But, like, on the iPad, I feel like it can't be that much. Like, open up the sandbox.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It's gotta be small. I'm listen. One, it's a numbers document, 100%. But b, Tim Cook, if there's any number to be known, I'm sure Tim Cook has known it or has it written down somewhere.
Stephen Robles:So, yeah, I'm sure I'm I'm sure it's a number they know, but that has to be negligible. And the amount of users even that would do something like that, minuscule compared to because most iPad users I would be curious this stat. I imagine most iPad users are kids and education. The education realm is huge for the iPad. I have a friend who works in a school district in Florida, and he deals with literally hundreds of iPads, maybe even thousands.
Stephen Robles:And so, yeah, it would be and schools wouldn't want that anyway. Schools wouldn't. They'd they'd wanna close all that down about
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:But, anyway, that's the iPad. Let let us know. You can leave us a five star rating and review an Apple Podcast. Should the iPad be a spork, or should it or should it just be
Jason Aten:a spork? You just framed the argument, though, in a very specific way. Right? Because you
Stephen Robles:That's that's I mean, but I get that part of the argument. That's all. If it you could come up with a better version of the argument, and we could do do that.
Jason Aten:A convertible 09/11, like, or whatever they call it, a Boxster, like the 09/18 Boxster or something. I said that are probably not even true, but
Stephen Robles:I think you're talking about cars, but I'm not gonna
Jason Aten:say it for Porsche. That's all I know. Porsche.
Stephen Robles:Is it really Porsche? Is it really Porsche?
Jason Aten:That I know for sure.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Alright. Well, that's if you say so. I don't I don't know. I've driven a Kia Soul and a Model s the last fifteen years.
Stephen Robles:It's all I got. It's so crazy.
Jason Aten:A Porsche nine eight six is er. And you can get a you can get a convertible version of that. And I'm telling you, it's not the best version of a Porsche, but it is I would take it right now. Anyone got one?
Stephen Robles:Okay. Okay. Alright. I wanna get to some liquid glass talk and talk about some of the criticism it's gotten. But before we do, we have some friends to thank.
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Stephen Robles:I didn't even know. A mountain of assets to protect. You know what we're talking about. Things like devices and software, but fortunately, you can conquer that mountain. This is this is literally what they sent me.
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Stephen Robles:You can click it there. Thanks to One Password for sponsoring this episode. And Agency, build the future of multi agent software with Agency. That's a g n t c y. The agency is an open source collective building the Internet of agents.
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Stephen Robles:That's a gntcy.0rg. That link is also in the show notes below. Our thanks to Agency for sponsoring this episode. Now just a couple quick little feature discoveries in the betas before we get to a liquid glass. This first one is talking about the Apple Wallet app.
Stephen Robles:One of my requests from the passwords app, which we got last year in iOS 18, is that, better ways to save your credit card information and bank account info, which is something I used to do with one password, which just talked about. But now Apple Wallets app in iOS 26 will let you save that credit card information, like security code, expiration date, and you can store it in the wallet instead of the passwords. I'm glad that's there. I get why maybe not put in the passwords because it's more credit card info. A step in the right direction.
Stephen Robles:I'm still hoping for more types of secured data somewhere in the passwords app, like passport numbers, light software license codes. I saved all of that in one password, and I would still like to put it in the passwords app. And I still I do it right now. I just kinda put it in the notes field of a new entry, and maybe that's the solution long term. But yeah, Apple Wallet app, it's an update.
Jason Aten:How for you, how is this different than the fact that they can already be stored in Safari?
Stephen Robles:So you can store them in Safari to autofill, but sometimes that autofill does not work on specific forms. Like, I'll be on a website and I have to put in payment info. They don't accept Apple Pay. And so I have to get the numbers for whatever. And I am hopeful, I haven't tried this specifically yet, that it's easier to copy and paste those numbers from the Wallet app rather than jumping into, like, the settings, Safari, auto fill, cards, and going through those steps.
Stephen Robles:But also, you might want to save a card info that's also not an auto fill. There might be a credit card that I don't ever intend to auto fill in Safari, but I wanna save the numbers for whatever because it's something I maybe it's a business card, and I wanna use that, but don't wanna accidentally autofill my business card in Safari. So things like that.
Jason Aten:You know? I was just curious because I have found that to be pretty reliable and I found that it also works outside of Safari. Right? That little thing pops up at different times. And so Yeah.
Jason Aten:I was just curious. Maybe it's just that this is confusing because people don't think, oh, credit cards. I stored them in Safari.
Stephen Robles:Right. And and makes sense. I mean and the Wallet app is getting more powerful. You know, deliveries, talked about last week even outside of Apple Pay and shop deliveries coming to the Wallet app. And listen.
Stephen Robles:If if the Wallet app is where I can securely save things like software license codes and passport numbers, I'd be down for that. Let me just just let me put it somewhere that's not an Apple Note. I just don't wanna do a secure Apple Note. That's just me. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:And one other quick feature, and I'm I'm actually pretty excited about this, is the autofill feature, which it always goes around social media periodically of, like, whoever built this at Apple deserves a raise, and then it gets 1,000,000 views for that tweet or post. But the auto fill feature, where you get texted a two factor code or email a two factor code, and then you can just tap it wherever you're trying to sign in, well, now in iOS 26, you'll actually be able to auto fill from third party apps. And so if you get and this is something I do, I use my Google Voice number for a lot of account creation and I'll get two factor text messages. Do you hear all that wind, by the way? This ASMR.
Jason Aten:Is that wind? Or I thought maybe it started raining outside here.
Stephen Robles:No. It's it it has there's been gusts of wind the last few seconds. So I don't know I don't know if our listeners hear that. But this this is an atmospheric episode. You get to experience I love it.
Jason Aten:It's great.
Stephen Robles:Other than that one. Sony, so those two factor codes, if they come through Google Voice or if they come through Spark, your email provider because typically, like, it was an emailed code, it had to come to your stock mail app, otherwise, you couldn't autofill it. Well, now it's going to work even in third party apps once they adopt it, and apps like Google Voice, which is what I use. So I'm excited for that.
Jason Aten:Yeah. That's great.
Stephen Robles:It's great. Alright. And I think, there's been a lot of other little features. We'll keep talking about them over the weeks. But I wanted to spend just a few minutes talking about Liquid Glass.
Stephen Robles:Now John Prosser, as he does, Front Page Tech is the channel on YouTube, kudos to him for the leaks because he did have many leaks about Liquid Glass in the months leading up to WWDC, and many of them were close to accurate or at least had the right idea. And so he obviously did have some kind of inside sources to show him UI elements. But a couple days ago, he published this video, which is basically the title is iOS 26 is terrible, and he just goes on to lambast liquid glass design schema. And he says it's terrible, and it doesn't look good and goes into and he uses the one example that a lot of people have used on social media, which is if you go to the app library or just have anything busy on screen and then pull down control center, it can look pretty busy, the UI of iOS 26 with a quick glance, because you have these control center elements that are semitransparent, and you can see stuff behind it, and it gets busy. And so he he talked all about that.
Stephen Robles:Before we offer our opinions, I'll say there's also been a couple other interviews that have gone out. Speaking of Apple execs and interviews, Alan Dye, Craig Federighi, they had an interview with GQ magazine, and Alan Dye, who's over all the design. He actually did an interview with iJustine last week at Dub Dub. Both Craig Federighi and Alan Dye talked about liquid glass design. And so lots of interviews there.
Stephen Robles:I've been playing around with it. You have the betas on multiple devices, and so I know you do.
Jason Aten:Everything. I'm running it right now on this computer. We're recording. I'm just kidding. I'm not doing
Stephen Robles:Are you for real? You just freaking out right No, Dennis. Okay.
Jason Aten:You thought the worst thing about this recording was gonna be the mountain. Nope.
Stephen Robles:There is a deer climbing the mountain right behind me, and I'm going to take a moment and snap a picture of this. And I will,
Jason Aten:that is This is how you know you live in Florida and not Michigan because there's probably three deer just outside of my office eating my wife's hostas, so.
Stephen Robles:Now listen, I lived in New York, grew up in New York and we had deer all the time. We had deer in the backyard. They would just walk around. We don't have deers in Florida, unless you go down to Key West or whatever, and then you see some random deer. The deer
Jason Aten:in Florida have way bigger teeth. They just call them alligators.
Stephen Robles:Very short legs. Anyway, that was exciting. There was a deer like 15 feet from me, I just took a picture. I'll figure out how to share it. But anyway, so liquid glass, you're running it on everything except the device you're recording.
Stephen Robles:That's great. I've been running it on an iPhone. I've spent some time with it. Here's the here's number one, and this is a little behind the scenes. Whenever the betas first come out, like beta one, if you are a news publication, if you're media, if you're a creator, Apple would prefer you don't offer opinions on the betas until you would get to the public beta.
Stephen Robles:A, because you do sign an agreement like the terms and conditions when you download developer betas, that this is for personal use, not for review, whatever. But and we've talked about this multiple times. Like, with iOS seven, the UI and elements are likely to change between now and September when this actually gets released to the public, even, like, public release, not just public beta. And so I think for Jon Prosser to have an entire video talking about how bad the design is in literally beta one. Like, this is the very first beta.
Stephen Robles:I think it is not tasteful. And, obviously, his channel and his persona is, you know, that, you know, to be kind of, like, extremely opinionated and either say Apple has done something incredible or Apple has done something terrible, and it's rarely nuanced in the middle. So I understand what he's doing, but there is also a lot of talk on social media about how liquid glass is bad. Again, using that one example of the control center over the app library or over a home screen, and it now looks good. A, I am 90% sure that will not look like that come September.
Stephen Robles:I think come September, when you swipe down for the control center, it's either gonna blur the background or somehow make the control center controls more opaque. I don't think it's gonna look like that. And once you remove that aspect, I think Liquid Glass is gonna have very few problems, if any. But in the iJustine interview with Alan Dye, he talked a lot about Liquid Glass having a material. I thought that was interesting.
Stephen Robles:He talked about it basically being like a material part of the UI. He also mentioned future products as a reason why they wanted to unify and redesign everything. So interesting. I think talking about AR glasses, whatever other future products, HomePad maybe, hopefully. And so, obviously, they're doing it for that reason.
Stephen Robles:But good design needs to have both form and function. And I think in some aspects, like you think about art, it could just be great art for the aesthetic or the the appeal of your eyes. But when it comes to software design, it has to be both aesthetic, nice to look at, and functional because it's something that you actually have to use to use your devices like your iPhone and your Mac. And so when it comes to that aspect, is it both functional and aesthetic? I think there are some aesthetics that need to be updated, like I talked about the control center, but I think people are overlooking some of the changes that have actually made the UI much better.
Stephen Robles:And the prime example is the contextual menu when you highlight text. And if you've ever wanted to run a shortcut by using the share button or use, like, the translate part when you select text, in iOS 18 and earlier, when you selected text, you had to tap tap those tiny little arrows in that small contextual menu. Sometimes you had to tap it four and five times to get to actions like share or translate when text was selected. And now in iOS 26, vastly improved. You can select text, you can tap a button, and now you have a vertically scrolling contextual menu that is a thousand times better.
Stephen Robles:And so I think there are the photos app, it has gone back to being better rather than being the iOS 18 version of the photos app, which I'm still not crazy about. And so I think there are actually some changes that are both aesthetically pleasing. The glass is fun to look at. You can do cool things like the glassy icons. But I think there's also some functional improvements in the redesign that people are overlooking, and they are focusing on the one or two examples that make Liquid Glass look a little too complicated and not on the function of a lot of the changes that are coming in iOS 26 as well.
Stephen Robles:And that's what I wanna say about that. But how do you feel? Because you have it on a bunch of stuff.
Jason Aten:I well, first of all, it was really interesting listening to iJustine's interview with Alan Dye. Alan Dye does seem like he is this is not meant to be a criticism, but he is slightly less used to having to explain the rationale behind things. Right? Because she asked him a question about, like, how do you go about starting a complete redesign like this? And it was a real felt like it was gonna be a process type of thing, and he definitely stayed way up and, like, well, you think about the way all these platforms work together and I'm like, that's that's not how you start.
Jason Aten:Like, I don't understand. Anyway, so I think it's actually what that sort of revealed to me is I I think there's a couple of competing things happening here. One, it's okay. Like, I I keep thinking about, and I wanna write about this. When when Steve Jobs I mean, the last time there was a we all we always talk about iOS seven, but there was no update to macOS when iOS seven came out.
Jason Aten:Right? There was no change in the design language at that point. So, really, you have to go back to, like, OS 10 and Aqua.
Stephen Robles:Well, Yosemite Yosemite was a redesign where things became less skeuomorphic and more flat. It wasn't it wasn't as big a change, I think, as this. I'll give you that.
Jason Aten:And so you really like, you really have to go back to, like, the Steve Jobs keynote where he's talking about Aqua, and he's like, you you the goal is you have to make it so that people want to lick the button. Right? Like, he's talking about a button. And but the point is, like, he's having so much fun, and user interactions should be delightful. And that is the thing that Apple has always been good at is delight delighting its users through these types of things.
Jason Aten:And sometimes it's enough to just simply say, we think it's really cool. Right? Like, Steve Jobs, you could just imagine him getting up there and being like, well, the slide to unlock thing. Like, it was so much engineering that went into something that is just incredibly cool that no one else had been able to do it.
Stephen Robles:Oh, like cover cover flow. Cover flow is probably the slowest way to navigate your albums, but it looks really cool.
Jason Aten:It was just really cool. And I just was hoping he would say, we just think it's awesome. But instead, they had, like, the camera shots where they had, like, carved the or or built the icons into actual pieces of, like, glass and stuff. And so it does sort of feel like Apple is maybe overthinking it a little bit in the way that they try to talk about it because I think that they should just, like, we just think it looks amazing. Like, you don't and and and to get to that point, yes, you have to do all of this studying how light interacts with things, but, like, none of these things are real.
Jason Aten:And also, what is liquid glass? Is this like lava? Like, it's not the metaphor I think you wanna use. So
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I think, you know, I get, like, a morphing substance or material as Allan Dye would say that, you know, has that glass like transparency. But anyway, I
Jason Aten:But it's not a real thing is what I'm trying say. Like, brushed aluminum, real thing. Right? Like Right. It lives in the physical world.
Jason Aten:So I I think it will be better. I think it's okay to put it on your devices and to talk about it as a media person. What the Apple really doesn't want you to do is to review it. Right? Because it is not finished yet, and it's not really fair to review something that's a beta.
Jason Aten:But it's totally fair fair game to be talking about it and to say what I like and to what I don't like about it. It's just important to understand it's not done. And I just I think I think it's cool. I don't think trans transparent notifications on your home screen are a great idea because you lose a lot of the context of what's happening. What I mean by the context is there's just not enough well, maybe contrast is a better way of saying it.
Jason Aten:It's it's like these pieces of glass sliding up my my home screen when I or the lock screen when I'm trying to look at notifications does kinda make it hard to tell which one should I look at and which one should I ignore for now. So they've got some work to do. The other one that's annoying is you can now I can't I keep reaching up for the phone with the beta and
Stephen Robles:it's That's
Jason Aten:that's I'm using as a camera. No.
Stephen Robles:You don't.
Jason Aten:But, you know, you can you you can now make the tall numbers. Right? You can make your numb the time tall time. You can have tall time.
Stephen Robles:Tall time.
Jason Aten:And if you do that, it will you it'll move the widgets that used to live right underneath it down to the bottom. But if you do that and you have the six notifications thing, it's just like they're just on top of each other. And it's like, oh, this is a bug because it's it's not a bug. It's like this is beta one. So that's not a criticism, but there are a lot of places where when you make it so that you can see through multiple layers, you gotta be much more thoughtful about what's underneath.
Stephen Robles:Right. Yeah. That's a good point. And we'll see. I still think it's gonna change.
Stephen Robles:And I was gonna say you mentioned notifications. I do wanna mention the one thing we didn't hear not a lick of it during the keynote, not the one thing. There's several things we didn't hear about. But, yeah, notifications remain completely unchanged. And I would not say that Apple has nailed it there, that it doesn't require any revision.
Stephen Robles:So it was a little disappointing that we didn't see any changes there. Yeah. Anyway, I it does it looks cool. And for you know, Frosler said in his video, like, Steve Jobs would roll over in his grave or whatever. It's like, you you really don't remember the hardware that Apple released for many years that basically looked exactly like this.
Stephen Robles:Like, it was a lot of clear plastic that Right. G three, iMac, the
Jason Aten:The cinema display.
Stephen Robles:The cinema display. All the bags that are like this, and then and then again, going back to Aqua. So I would not, yeah. I would not say that Steve Jobs would be against this today. So but anyway.
Jason Aten:Also, I feel like there's only a few people who should be allowed to say Steve Jobs would roll over in his grave. And I don't know that Jon Prosser necessarily on that list.
Stephen Robles:Fair enough. Fair enough. I feel you got like Johnny Ive, Tim Cook, maybe a couple Apple execs.
Jason Aten:Maybe Gruber.
Stephen Robles:Maybe
Jason Aten:the guy no one wants to talk to right now. I don't know. Jason Snell. You know, Walt Mossberg. Walt
Stephen Robles:Mossberg. Jarvis Fisher.
Jason Aten:That's
Stephen Robles:it. Yeah. There yeah. Exactly. You yeah.
Stephen Robles:You have to have at least spoken to him in person once
Jason Aten:to
Stephen Robles:be able to say that.
Jason Aten:Were you invited to his funeral? Then no. You don't know.
Stephen Robles:That's that's a good that's a good point. Okay. Lightning round, and then we get to a quick personal tech.
Jason Aten:I love lightning rounds.
Stephen Robles:Lightning round. The actual lightning round. Threads adding more Fetaverse features, like an entire Fetaverse feed and profile search. You know, we didn't haven't heard about Fetaverse in a while, but it's still out there. It's still being a thing.
Stephen Robles:So hopefully, it keeps being a thing.
Jason Aten:Is Threads ever gonna replace x, or do we just now have two worlds where we have to post all the time?
Stephen Robles:Can I just I'm so tired of the four apps of Threads, x, Blue Sky, Mastodon? I keep posting on all four. I keep looking on all four because there are people who interact with me on all four. Like, I don't wanna leave people hanging, and I don't see those people on the other platforms. I don't think threads is gonna replace x, unfortunately.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. I've been seeing people say blue sky is not a great environment right now either, so I don't don't know what's happening.
Jason Aten:Well, this is such a perfect like, everyone's like, well, it's great to have all these choices except for no, it's not because what was really nice is when all of the audience was in one play. Like, that was the reason that Twitter Yes. Was the place is because that's where all of the people who you'd want to do Twitter things with were, and now you have four places where you have to go for all of the same types of things. And there's way too much mental friction to try to decide, do I post this here? Do I post this here?
Jason Aten:Do I do this? And then I never mind. We're not even gonna get into the fact that every time I open the Instagram app and I tap on a thing, it's like, oh, wait. I accidentally launched threads because that's not actually wasn't even an Instagram post. It's like, come on.
Stephen Robles:That that is a weird thing too because, like, now when I post a reel, I can post it to threads. And I'm like, I don't I don't know what happens to people when they see that. If they tap it, do they get sent over to Instagram? Can they just watch it in threads? I don't know.
Stephen Robles:But it's not a great time. Gone are the halcyon days where we just had one place just to go.
Jason Aten:It wasn't a great place, but at least it was one.
Stephen Robles:But at least exactly. It wasn't a great place. At least it was one. I wanted to mention OpenAI. They were awarded a $200,000,000 contract with the United States defense department, the Department of Defense, namely to use OpenAI's technology and ChatGPT to defend against cybersecurity threats and things like that.
Stephen Robles:I think it's an interesting one because OpenAI is trying to find ways to be profitable because $20 a month from even millions of people is not going to make it profitable. But deals like this could, and so curious. And I think this also sets OpenAI continually ahead and apart from some of the other AI companies like Anthropic and Claude because they are not working with like, this is like a commercial contract. You know what I mean? And so interesting that OpenAI is the one to land it.
Stephen Robles:And we also didn't get back to Dub Dub, we didn't get any of the additional AI model options that were rumored. Like, you can't use Gemini or Claude in, like, the built in iOS settings like you can with OpenAI and ChatGPT. And so I think they just continue to kinda set themselves apart.
Jason Aten:Do you think at some point because I've heard that maybe it's still coming, but that perhaps they hadn't either worked out the deal or that Apple just simply didn't want to give that much juice to Google, not necessarily because they don't like each other, but because considering all of the legal things going on, did it make a lot of sense? But do you think it's gonna be a situation where you just go into a toggle and you're like, when I do visual intelligence instead of sending it to chat GPT, send it to Gemini instead?
Stephen Robles:I I just don't think it's going to come now, honestly. Now now with the foundation models that are available to developers via APIs, with the Apple Intelligence models that are now available through the shortcuts actions on device and private cloud compute, I don't think Apple's gonna open it up. Mhmm. Both competitively, also just like, they would probably prefer I mean, their models will benefit if users use them because they can they're training it. So they can train the model on that data as well.
Stephen Robles:And I just with, like, visual intelligence right now, Google is already there. Like, you can use the reverse Google Image Search. It's literally a dedicated button in visual intelligence. I don't think you know, they have ChatGPT if you wanna do a more, web related far reaching search. So I I don't think we're actually gonna see it now.
Jason Aten:You know, the other thing that was interesting about the what you brought up, the DOD contract is, you know who else has a lot of DOD contracts?
Stephen Robles:Who's that?
Jason Aten:Microsoft. So this is just another interesting piece of the law like, you wanna talk about a breakup. You thought that the Gruber and Apple breakup was a was a thing. It's, you know, there's also like well, there's also a lot of talk that that that relationship is reaching sort of a friction point over you know, Microsoft has a lot of leverage in terms of OpenAI wanting to sort of divorce itself of its, like, you know, becoming a part for profit company and doing all these different types of things. They're, like, a little bit of fight over how much control will Microsoft have because right now Microsoft has a huge right to both the IP in the future and a lot of its profits.
Jason Aten:And so how does open a OpenAI convince Microsoft to give up that that control and those that right? It's like, you don't have any leverage in this. And so OpenAI instead is gonna just go out and try to build its own business where you could in another timeline, you could have seen a world where OpenAI is like, nope. You know what? We are going to be the model.
Jason Aten:We're gonna be the model on the iPhone. We're gonna be the model on Azure. We're gonna be the model. Like, what you know what I mean? And so but we don't live in that world.
Stephen Robles:We don't. A different world. You know the world we do live in though, Jason, is the world where WhatsApp got ads. Finally happened. If it's if it's a meta property, it's gonna get ads, people.
Stephen Robles:Okay?
Jason Aten:This is the most inevitable thing, whatever, fifteen years in the making.
Stephen Robles:Threads now has ads. WhatsApp now has ads. Just has ads. That's all.
Jason Aten:I think didn't wasn't it the wasn't it the founder of WhatsApp who said, like, ads make everything worse. That's why we charge our customers. And then Meta bought this is, like, not even that long before the the deal, like, a year before Meta bought them. And it took a long time for
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It did.
Jason Aten:And and and they're saying it's only in the, what is it called? The, it's not Discover. It's Oh, I
Stephen Robles:don't know.
Jason Aten:Updates. I think it's called updates, which by the way
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Updates
Jason Aten:tab. Is a tab I've I had to open the app because I do use WhatsApp for some things. Like, our our daughter's soccer team, all the parents use it. There's, like, a family group in here. There's all these different things.
Jason Aten:There sure enough is a little tab down there called updates that I've never tapped on once, and I'm not even gonna do it now because I don't wanna see ads. But it's like it's like, I don't understand. How long do you think it's gonna be before it ends up in your chats?
Stephen Robles:That's what I'm saying.
Jason Aten:Maybe not in the actual chats, but in the chats feed. Like, I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Ads come for us all. That's all I'm saying. Well, at least with meta. Ad is gonna come for you all. Okay.
Stephen Robles:Personal tech. Have you been seeing little videos on social media? I don't know if you see them or not or maybe on Facebook. Of these, like, AI generated news bits and is basically the anchor being, like, saying something serious at first. And then they're like, just kidding.
Stephen Robles:I'm not real and neither is this video. And they are just increasingly convincing in quality, both video and audio until something wild happens. But have you seen any of these?
Jason Aten:No. I I was looking at it now and I'm really angry because now I'm sure my feed will be full of them. Thank you very much. I'm gonna not click on anything on this page so that I don't I think this is not where it's UFO flying out of the water is not the thing people will be duped by, obviously.
Stephen Robles:No. No. No. No. But these videos are an exam are basically trying to show here's how real it can look and sound.
Stephen Robles:You need to be aware of this. And there's other videos. I I didn't have it pulled up, but there's one that's like, you know, Canada has declared war on The US or whatever. And that one is it doesn't do anything weird, like, with a UFO or anything. Like, that one just like it's just a news anchor, like, saying the news, and it is very convincing.
Stephen Robles:And then in the caption, it says, like, this is AI or whatever. I I just I see these videos. I see how some of my family use social media, and I the ink the concern level is rising because I just know I'm going to get questions or be told, did you hear this? And did you see that? And that's gonna be increasingly difficult to be like, that's not real.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:And, like and I think with certain people, it might be almost harder to convince them that it's not real than it is. Because I think for a certain generation, like, seeing a video of a thing is, like, proof. It's like the ultimate, like, I saw it with my own eyes.
Jason Aten:Well, my Facebook feed, unfortunately, I don't know what I did to deserve this, is full of like a picture of some famous person, Peyton Manning standing next to, like, a young woman and it's like, here's the story of how Peyton Manning adopted this girl when she was abandoned by her parents at age three and she's raised her and blah blah blah. And it's like, no. He doesn't have an adopted daughter. But, like, there'll be there'll be, like, 70,000 replies to it, and someone who I know has, like, shared it. And I'm like, the Indianapolis Colt, like, have you ever you he's not a, like, a a an unknown thing.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:People know who like, this is not a story that is just coming out seven years after he retired or whatever it's been. Like, so it people Pete, you're right. This is gonna be a problem.
Stephen Robles:I also see a lot not a lot, but every once in a while, I'll jump into Facebook. And the ads that you see in Facebook now will have AI generated imagery as the thumbnail. And I remember seeing this one. I think I mentioned it a while ago, but it it was basically like an inflatable pool that was rather large, and the whole edges of it were seats. And, like so it was basically, like, a huge bench that's a circle, but that was also a pool.
Stephen Robles:And it's, like, made whatever. And I thought it was one of my relatives. They were like, doesn't this pool look cool? I had to be like, that's not real. That's not a real thing.
Stephen Robles:And when you click it, it'll be like pool inflatable store and, like, order floaties or whatever. But, like, the image that they saw was just not real and not something you could even buy. And it's like, man, this is gonna be harder and harder to deal with. And, you know, I know Google is they talked about an IO working with, like, the identification, how they can that there's ways to identify AI generated content, and anything made with VO has whatever tags in the background. But, honestly, I don't know if that matters because as so as soon as someone shares a clip of something on TikTok or Instagram Reels, there's no anything there.
Stephen Robles:Like, there's there's no, like, warning label that TikTok puts on it or that Instagram puts on it. They just do it. And so I don't know. I I just I'm not sounding an alarm, but I'm not not sounding an alarm. You know what I mean?
Jason Aten:Like Media literacy is a real problem. Media
Stephen Robles:literacy. That. That's that's that's the thing. That's, anyway, I don't know. Do you I'm actually less concerned for, like, my kids because I feel like they'll be able to spot this stuff and be more skeptical as they grow up for better or worse, maybe for better, that they would like, when they see a video of Canada invades The US, they're gonna be like, And if they're really interested, they'll, at the very least, look it up, but at the very, very least, not share it.
Stephen Robles:And I think that's the problem is there's a lot of people out there who will see something and feel compelled to share it because they feel like it's important information even though it's AI generated. And that gets promulgated and spread, and that's not good. And so I feel like younger generations are almost better equipped because they realize how much AI there is out there. And so, anyway, I don't know.
Jason Aten:As a Gen Xer, my generation's response to the Canada invades The US is like, really? I think we could take them. It's gonna be fine.
Stephen Robles:But they are sure. But, like, that sorry for all of our Canada listeners. So Jason does he's not downplaying here.
Jason Aten:I think even if you live in no offense. Like, I like we I live in Michigan. I live very close to Canton.
Stephen Robles:Very you're
Jason Aten:basically was invading The US.
Stephen Robles:You'd be first.
Jason Aten:It's either going to be New York or Michigan. Right? Like, I it's but I also think that, like, there I don't think Canada's invading The US as
Stephen Robles:long as gonna say.
Jason Aten:Which is actually an important thing. Here's the piece I think that's important for people. Yes. The videos are can become very compelling, but it does not take very much to figure out aside from a news organization you trust being hacked, which is another separate but potentially real problem. Yeah.
Jason Aten:It does not take much to figure out, like, I don't know who shared this. I don't know who they shared it, the source is. Right. I can tell that's not my local news station. So I think I'm like, it's not hard to deduce these things.
Jason Aten:I do get shared this kind of stuff on a regular basis, and I'm like, that's not real.
Stephen Robles:But even those questions you just ask yourself, I think people are not asking them.
Jason Aten:That's the media literacy part.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And the media literacy because, like, I will see older generations scrolling Facebook Reels, and no one looks at the profile in the bottom left corner to see whose video this is or who shared it. It's just here's a video, and it's devoid of context or attribution, like, everything. And so it's just a very much like, I saw this thing. And, like, that's that's just I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I'm I'm bracing myself to hear that phrase more and more in the future. I saw this thing, and it'd basically be garbage.
Jason Aten:I just have a key key like, a shortcut, a keyboard shortcut that's, like, not real.
Stephen Robles:What do you mean?
Jason Aten:Oh, to people who send me something not
Stephen Robles:real. R.
Jason Aten:Did you see this thing? Not real.
Stephen Robles:Not real. This is AI. You've been duped. Anyway, so we're gonna end on a high note. In our bonus episode, I wanted to ask Jason about his streaming solutions when he travels.
Stephen Robles:And so if you wanna hear our bonus episode, get an ad free version of this episode and our Primary Tech Daily podcast. You can support the show at join.primarytech.fm, or you can support the show directly in Apple Podcasts, and you still get all those same benefits. Although if you want chapters in the show, you need to do it at primarytech.fm. So go do that there. You can leave us a five star rating and review.
Stephen Robles:Let us know if you have some full self driving experiences to share. You know, I'd be curious in the discussion too, like, our community or in the five stars, like, thoughts about these AI generated content concerns. But let us know. Support the show. We appreciate you watching.
Stephen Robles:Subscribe on YouTube. Youtube.com/@primarytechshow. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. We'll catch you next time.
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